Essay on Relevance of Psychology to Nursing!
Florence Nightingale was the first nurse in the history of nursing. She rendered her services to the soldiers in the war field. From then onwards nursing is growing very elaborately. The nurses are the professionals meant for care of patients.
The patient may be suffering from acute or chronic disease; may be male or female, young or old, will come to the hospital with so many physical and psychological problems. They will have tensions, worries, pains and also many doubts about their illness, the kind of treatment they get, the cure of disease, etc. so also the relatives of patients.
The knowledge of psychology will help nurse to understand the problems and needs of patients and attend to them. She can understand the motives, attitudes, perceptions and personality characteristics of patients in a better way. This will help the patients to attain quick relief and cure—which is the basic motto of a nurse.
Psychology is relevant not only in physical health care, but also highly relevant in the field of mental health. Today we see more and more people are suffering from mental illness. Some patients may have minor problems and others may have serious illness.
The knowledge of psychology will help nurses to understand such abnormal behaviours and help the patients in the management and cure. Nurses working in mental hospitals definitely need the full knowledge of general, abnormal, clinical and counselling psychology.
The nurses in community health centres may help people by recognising the mental illness in the early stages and convince them to take appropriate treatment. They can also help people to prevent mental illness by appropriate guidance to deal with stress, anxiety and other life problems.
If the nurse is healthy both physically and psychologically, she can work better and do justice to her profession. But, the nurse is also a human being who has her own emotions, feelings, attitudes, personality characteristics, etc.
She has her own limitations also. The knowledge of psychology will help her to understand her strengths and weaknesses. By knowing these aspects, she can try to overcome such weaknesses which affect her work, and she may develop the good personality characteristics and abilities to carry on her responsibilities, and do her duties effectively and efficiently.
Good nursing care also depends upon the ability of a nurse to understand the situations properly, and also in obtaining the cooperation of other people concerned. Psychology will help nurses to understand the problematic situations properly, and also helps to understand the people related to nursing care either directly or indirectly, and seek their cooperation in managing her duties.
In this way, psychology is highly relevant to nursing today, particularly because of increasing psychosomatic illnesses due to more and more stressful life situations.